by Kara Isaac
Every time she saw him, a loud, insistent voice nagged at her, telling her she needed to tell him the truth. No matter how much she tried to muffle it, it refused to stay silent. It felt like she had a tumor inside her, growing and growing.
She just had to get through the next four months of planning this ball, and then it would be over. Her job would be done. She’d resign. Probably leave Oxford.
“So, are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Peter returned to their table as she stabbed the cake again.
Emelia dragged her attention back to what they were supposed to be doing: choosing the two desserts for the sit-down dinner. They should have done it weeks ago, but somehow it had fallen off her color-coded, cross-referenced spreadsheet. “What? Nothing’s going on.”
“Sure. And you and Reepicheep are best friends.”
“Ha. Very funny.”
“Is it the cake?” Peter pointed his fork to the sample of black forest layer cake that sat practically untouched on her plate.
“It’s a bit dry.” Emelia poked at it with her fork and a few crumbs toppled off. She tried to focus on the task at hand. The sooner they got through it, the sooner she could go home, get in her pajamas, and read some Narnia. Maybe The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Right now she could do with sailing off to the ends of the earth.
Speaking of which, hopefully she’d get home to find Jackson had accomplished his mission of finding and retrieving his broken model from wherever Peter had stashed it. She’d found someone who thought they might be able to fix it for her. She just needed to get the thing without Peter’s knowing. Just in case it couldn’t be done.
She made a show of dipping her fork into a piece of chocolate torte. “This one is better.” And it was chocolate. Who wouldn’t want a chocolate torte at a ball? In the background the refrigerated cabinets hummed.
She flipped through the folder that sat on the table in front of her. It held pages of all the different desserts the bakery did. The torte and crème brûlée both looked fine. And right now fine was good enough. “I think we go with these two.” She pushed the folder toward Peter.
He didn’t even look at it. “Have I done something?” The guy wouldn’t let it go. Clearly she wasn’t as good at pretending as she’d given herself credit for.
“We should split the rest of the list.” The words fell out of her mouth. “There’s not much left. Divide and conquer and all that.” The only things left were confirming arrangements already made and getting Elizabeth to approve the deposits on anything that wouldn’t accept credit cards. They didn’t need to see each other to work on promotional details.
“No.” Peter’s voice was firm.
“Excuse me?”
“No. I’m not splitting the list unless you tell me what I’ve done. I must have done something.” He leaned forward on his elbows, pale blue T-shirt stretching across his chest.
“You haven’t done anything. It’s me, okay? I’m the one who’s done everything.” The words burst out of her.
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m never going to believe like you do.”
“What?” Peter looked at her like he didn’t know what the drama was. He forked another piece of torte and popped it in his mouth, not looking the least bit perturbed.
“You keep looking at me with these hopeful eyes, like maybe one day I’m going to wake up miraculously converted, and it’s just not going to happen. I’m so glad it works for you, but it’s just never going to be my thing. I have too much stuff to believe in a good God. I can get a disinterested one. A vengeful one. An ambivalent one. But not a good one. So what’s the point?” She gestured like an insane woman with her fork, not even caring that a piece of cake got flung across the room.
“Of?”
“Of this.” Emelia gestured to the two of them. “Of just being ‘friends.’ ” She stuck up her fingers to do the air quotes and almost stabbed herself in the side of the head. “We can’t pretend we don’t have chemistry. Well, maybe you can, but I can’t. I like you and it is killing me. I’m planning a ball with the one guy I want and can’t have. But at the same time I think he is insane for wanting a piece of metal so bad he’s willing to spend the rest of his life disabled for a shot at it. If there is a God, I’ve got to give Him points for the irony of it all.”
Peter just stared at her, fork halfway to his mouth.
“You don’t know me. If you knew the things I’d done, you’d want nothing to do with me.” Emelia’s fork smashed into a piece of pastry, grinding it into the plate.
Peter had put his fork down, but his mouth still hung half open.
“What?”
“You’re right. There is a lot I don’t know about you. And a lot you don’t know about me. I wish you trusted me enough to tell me. But there is nothing that you could have done that would make me want to have nothing to do with you.” His eyes shone with certainty and conviction.
“You have no idea what you’re talking about.” Emelia pushed out her chair and fled.
The chaotic scene played back in Peter’s mind as he drove and tried to work out where it had gone so horribly wrong. Emelia had been off since he’d picked her up. Wooden. Stilted. Going through the motions. The dying world of Charn in The Magician’s Nephew had more life.
It didn’t take a psychologist to see the hurt that she was hiding. And he’d stupidly decided to push it, instead of just leaving her be. What she’d said had sliced through him. It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter how much they liked each other or what chemistry they had. She was right. If she never had a faith of her own it was all for naught.
He forced out a breath and reminded himself of everything. Emelia falling out of the wardrobe. The teacup. All the ways their paths had been forced to cross.
He didn’t believe in coincidence. Not at this level. Coincidence was finding a free parking spot. Not this. This was God making a move. Even if Emelia didn’t see it that way.
The question was, what was he meant to do? Was he meant to step back and let it all go? Or was he meant to help show her the God who never gives up?
He parked the car and half jogged up the steps to Highbridge. Opening the front door, he strode down the hallways toward the kitchen. He pushed the door open to see his mum standing with her back to him, spooning flour into a rotating bowl. It dusted the air as the beaters caught it and threw some back up.
She jumped at the sound of his entering the room. “Peter. You gave me a fright. Did I forget you were coming today?”
“Would you do it again?”
His mother turned the beaters off. “Would I do what again?”
“Marry Dad.”
“That’s like asking me to wish my life away. If I hadn’t married your father I wouldn’t have you. Or Victor.” Not exactly an emphatic statement that she wouldn’t change anything.
“But what if you could go back in time. What if there was no me or Victor? Would you marry him again?”
She studied him, her gray eyes processing whatever it was she was reading in his face. “No.” The two letters hit him like a pipe bomb. “And the truth is he wouldn’t marry me either.”
Peter sank into one of the chairs at the small table in the corner of the kitchen.
His mother wiped her hands on a towel, then walked over and pulled out the chair beside him. “Emelia?”
“Yeah.” There was no point in pretending.
“Do you love her?”
“I don’t know. She just has so much stuff. And she won’t let me in to . . .” His words trailed off. To what? To help? To make it better somehow when he didn’t even know what it was?
“It’s not your job to fix her.” His mother’s soft words interrupted Peter’s train of thought.
“I know that.”
“Do you? You have a habit of shouldering the burden of things that aren’t yours to carry. Victor’s face. My health. Anita’s addictions. Whatever it is that is going on in Emelia’s life. Don’t get me wrong
. I really like her, but you can’t fix whatever the wounds are that she bears. There’s only one who can do that. And she has to want to let Him.”
Peter rubbed his forehead. “I keep trying to distance myself, I do. I know we can’t be anything more than friends unless she’s a Christian. But, I don’t know, it doesn’t make sense. I just feel like God has me in her life for a reason.”
“I’m sure He does. The question is, are you okay if it’s not the reason that you want it to be? Then what?”
“I don’t know.” He hadn’t let himself go there.
“It is the toughest thing in the world to spend your whole life battling with the person you love most on the one thing neither of you can compromise on. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.”
“Is it really that bad?” Maybe he’d been kidding himself that his parents had a good marriage.
His mother sighed. “Your father is a good man. And he loves me the best he can. Of course it’s not that bad. It’s just not as great as it could be. And, for you, I want so much more than what we have. I want the girl you can share your whole life with, not just compartments of it.” She gave him a wobbly smile. “Plus, I’m your mum. I don’t want to see you get hurt. And Emelia has the potential to break your heart. I’ve known that since the first day you brought her here.”
“And Sabine didn’t?” Sabine was the smart choice. She was great. She loved God. She would be the first person to cheer on his comeback. It wouldn’t be feckless or selfish to her. Maybe he should just give what they had another chance instead of getting tangled up in something that all the signs suggested had the hallmarks of a disaster.
Emelia didn’t believe in God and thought his Olympic desires were crazy. There was no chemistry or fierce hoping in the world that could paper over those canyon-sized cracks.
His mother stared out the window to where, just a couple of weeks before, Emelia had paced out steps to work out how many outdoor lights they would need for the ball. “You never looked at Sabine the way you look at Emelia.”
Over his mother’s shoulder, he could see the large family sideboard. Inside the glass-fronted top cupboard sat her collection of Aynsley teacups. The latest addition sat front and center.
He felt the desperate need to grab on to something, anything. “The teacup was in the wardrobe.”
“Pardon?” His mother’s brow wrinkled.
“The teacup I gave you. The one that completed your set. I looked for it for ten years. It was in the same wardrobe that Emelia fell out of when we met. The day before your birthday. Surely that means something.”
“I suspect it means that God is pursuing her.” She fixed him with a long look. “Make sure you don’t get in the way.”
Thirty-Four
GOING TO CHURCH WITH PETER and his mom, followed by lunch with his parents. So much for keeping her distance. All she’d wanted was to cross a few final things off her list that could only be done on location.
“Emelia?” Peter spoke from across the lunch table. “Can you pass the butter?” He gave her a questioning look. It obviously wasn’t the first time he’d asked.
“Sorry. In my own world.” She picked up the cream ceramic tray beside her plate and handed it to him, holding it at the end so there was no chance of their fingers touching.
Pushing her chair back, she took her and Maggie’s plates to the sink. On the way back she paused at the cupboard, looking at the teacups lined up inside it. The one at the front was familiar. “Those are beautiful teacups.”
“Peter gave that front one to me for my birthday. He’d been looking for it for years.”
“Years?”
Maggie came over from where she’d been serving dessert at the counter and opened the cupboard, pointing to the familiar one with pink roses. “It was the last one I needed to complete my collection. He looked for it for years, then finally found it in an antiques shop the night before my birthday.”
Suddenly Emelia remembered where she had seen it. It looked just like the teacup that had been in the wardrobe. She’d forgotten all about it. He’d been looking for it for years? What was going on? She turned to see Peter studying her. “Is that the—”
Somewhere behind her there was a huge thump, followed by a crash.
She glanced around the table, but no one else seemed to have noticed. Then a man yelled, “Over there! No, not there, there.”
“Um, do you have guests staying?”
Peter’s mother had returned to serving up dessert. Another thump and yell pulled her attention toward the doorway leading to the main parts of the house. “Oh, sorry. We’re so used to them, these days we hardly really notice.”
Them?
Peter paused buttering his last piece of bread. The guy must have packed away almost half a loaf. “Film crews. Quite a few use the house as a location for period dramas.”
Huh. Now it made sense that Highbridge had seemed familiar back when she’d done some cursory research on Victor. She’d probably seen it on TV once.
Maggie scooped a huge spoonful of pudding into a bowl. “A very handy income stream to have. God bless Downton Abbey, and not just for being one of the best shows ever. Since that screened, we’ve had more business than we could accommodate.”
“What’s filming today?” Even though she’d spent a decent chunk of her career reporting on movie stars and their scandals, she’d never been on a set. She’d tried to sneak into a few but never quite managed to make it.
Peter’s mom thought for a second, her brow rumpling. “Honestly, I couldn’t tell you. I’ll have it in the booking schedule somewhere. I can go find it if you—”
“Oh, no.” Emelia returned to her seat. “Don’t go to any trouble.”
“Why don’t we go have a look after lunch?” Peter suggested.
“Can we?” The two little words somehow managed to betray her excitement.
He shrugged. “Sure. It’s our house.”
“Thanks, darling,” Bill said as Maggie put a huge bowl of apple pudding in front of him. Emelia had completely forgotten he was beside her.
Then an equally huge bowl landed in front of her. The scent of cinnamon and mixed spices warming the air. Oh, wow. She wouldn’t need to eat for a week after this.
“Cream.” Peter’s mom placed an enormous bowl of whipped cream in front of her, the slight tremor of her hand the only sign of the degenerative disease infiltrating her nervous system. Emelia ladled a spoonful into her bowl and waited for Maggie to rejoin the table with her own dish and Peter’s.
“Eat while it’s hot.” Peter gestured to her bowl.
She didn’t need to be told twice. Within a second her mouth was filled with sweetness and spice, warmth and cool cream. It was so good she closed her eyes for a second in bliss. “This is possibly the best thing I’ve ever tasted in my whole life.”
“So I see.”
She opened her eyes to find Peter staring at her like she was dessert. His expression threatened her resolve to keep her emotional distance.
“Think I might go eat this while I watch the cricket.” His father suddenly pushed back his chair and reached his spoon across her, scooping up some cream and dumping it over his pudding in one smooth motion.
“I’ll join you.” Maggie hadn’t even put Peter’s bowl on the table yet but followed her husband out of the room, carrying her own.
She had never seen two middle-aged people move so fast. Was it something she’d said?
Peter pushed back his chair and went to claim his dessert as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened. “Would you like anything else to drink while I’m up?” He asked the question while helping himself to a few more generous spoonfuls from the serving dish.
“No. Thanks.”
Peter put his bowl down opposite her and sat back down. It was piled so high, she was sure anything he added would slide down the slopes and onto the table.
“What did you think of the service today?” He asked the question cautiously, as if half expec
ting to find himself on another emotional landmine.
She moved her spoon through her bowl. She’d only gone because every time she saw him she felt so riddled with guilt that suffering through a church service seemed like a small penance to pay. “It was different from what I expected.”
“How so?”
“Quieter. More . . . peaceful.” She’d been braced for some kind of long thundering sermon that made her feel even more condemned than she already did. Instead, a soft-spoken woman with blond hair had talked for all of fifteen minutes about the Good Samaritan. She still felt off balance from the experience. Church not being what she’d expected, braced herself for, created more questions than answers.
She’d sat next to Peter’s mother and spent half the service wondering what Maggie would do if she had any idea she was sitting next to the girl who had a role in the death of her niece. A sermon featuring a vengeful God would have been welcome. That was what she deserved. She knew what box to put Him in.
“Julianne is a great vicar. Maybe I should go to her for advice on handling career change since she’s managed it so well.” Peter poured himself some orange juice.
“What did she used to be?”
“A trader in the city. Hedge funds. Crazy money stuff I don’t even understand. Really good at it too, from what I hear. One of their biggest earners. Then one day she resigned to go to seminary.”
Emelia almost choked on her first mouthful of pudding. “No way.”
“Yes way. This is her first vicarage posting.”
“How do you go from being a London trader to a vicar? How does that even happen?”
“God.” He said the word easily. Like it was a simple explanation. Rather than the three most complicated letters in the universe.
Emelia had been as prickly as a hedgehog when they’d gone to church. Like she was expecting to be set upon at any moment from all directions. But as the service had continued, she’d seemed to relax. Unless it was optimism clouding his perception.
Peter cobbled together a mangled prayer as he loaded the dishwasher, not sure how to phrase what he wanted to say. He knew Emelia couldn’t find God to make him happy. People had to do it for themselves. He could point her in the right direction, light the path with flashing runway lights, but he couldn’t walk the path for her, no matter how much he wanted to.